What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.

From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest. Darkness, you know, is relative.

But once you throw a stone, there are ripples in the pond, even if you remove the rock.

How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?

Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.

Ross held her face between his hands and kissed her. He tasted doubt on her tongue and pain on the roof of her mouth. He swallowed these, and drank again. Consumed, she had no choice but to see how empty he was inside, and how, sip by sip, she filled him.

My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.